Google lands Earth software in your browser

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Google has parted the clouds to make its 3-D software, Google Earth, available to developers who want to embed the aerial images into their Web sites, the way they can with Google Maps. The Internet giant made the announcement today at its annual conference for software developers in San Francisco. Google says 2,900 developers are showing up at the Moscone Center to take part in Google I/OTM.

lt’s all part of Google’s big push into Web-based computing, or what it calls ‘cloud computing’ (Google executives like to call it the war between Microsoft Windows and the Web). Basically, that means that Google is trying to deliver software over the Internet that runs inside your browser.

More than 150,000 Web sites have created applications that use Google Maps, including ones that direct friends to parties or pinpoint the location of homes for sale or apartments to rent. With the visualization software, Google Earth, developers will be able to create much more lush applications, said Google’s technical lead on the project, Paul Rademacher. Users won’t have to install Google Earth on their computers to view the applications.

Rademacher said that in the three years since Google introduced its mapping software, the company had transformed the mapping landscape from static to dynamic. Google Earth has transported users into a whole new three-dimensional realm by giving them access to sophisticated, high-resolution satellite imagery. It’s all part of Google’s mission to make the online world useful and universally accessible, he said.

‘We don’t hold all the world’s best ideas ourselves,’ he said. ‘If we can build the technology and let other people build on top of that technology, then we will have a better product, and you will have creations that would never have happened before.’

-- Jessica Guynn

Google Earth Image courtesy of Google